For the purpose of this market, a pandemic is “at least as deadly as COVID-19” if, by 1st March 2044, there have been more deaths caused by the pathogen since the beginning of this market than COVID-19 caused throughout its entire pandemic stage. The source for the numbers of deaths will be the official WHO site or, if the WHO ceases to exist, some suitable successor.

Multiple mutations of the same pathogen (e.g. the original C19 and the omicron variant of C19) count as a single pandemic, with the exception of seasonal flu. Mutations of some other variant of flu (e.g. bird flu) do count as a single pandemic.

Man-made pathogens count for this market as long as they spread primarily through human-to-human transmission. Man-made pathogens which do not spread much between individuals (e.g. anthrax) do not count.